bias Archives – Decision Fish: Decide For Yourself

Time To Choose Your Health Insurance: Don’t Make A $9,000 Mistake

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 20:23:42 +0000

Is there any financial decision that we dread more than the annual chore of choosing a health insurance plan? It’s got everything we hate: choice and information overload, time pressure, ambiguity and confusion, consequences worth thousands, uncomfortable scenarios involving disease and injury, inscrutable jargon coming at a time of the year full of other business, ... Read more

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Will ‘Decisive’ Make You A Better Decision Maker?

Brett F. Whysel — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 15:41:22 +0000

“Do you know what you want?” Those six, dreaded words haunt my otherwise happy memory of a meal my friends and I enjoyed to celebrate graduating from university. It seemed such an important occasion: I wanted to get my menu selection exactly right. You can imagine the groans around the table after the third or fourth postponement ... Read more

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Trust Me! Why You Need To Understand Trust, and How To Earn It (Part 2)

Brett F. Whysel — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 17:48:05 +0000

As we explored in my last article about Victor, the appliance repairman, trust is increasingly necessary and valuable in modern life. At the same time, trust is getting scarcer as well-publicized betrayals in business and government add up. What is Trust? But what is trust? The dictionary defines trust as the “Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.” ... Read more

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Trust Me: Why Trust Matters More than Ever (Part 1)

Brett F. Whysel — Mon, 30 Jul 2018 17:38:30 +0000

The other day, I invited a total stranger with a Ukrainian accent, “Victor,” whom I found on the Internet, to come into my house. Within 24 hours of my call, he was in my kitchen, fixing two appliances. I paid him $550 by personal check. Why did this work so well?An underlying level of trust in ... Read more

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Interview: Michelle Gilmore on Behavior-Centered Design

Brett F. Whysel — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 19:00:22 +0000

We were delighted to have Michelle Gilmore, Design Director and Founder of design firm Neo, speak at a recent Behavioral Economics-NYC meetup about her cutting-edge work in the design of products, services and systems. Her presentation led to a lot of interest and discussion among those who were there and particularly among those who missed out. ... Read more

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Ariely Redux: Dollars and Sense Explains How We Make Money Mistakes

Brett F. Whysel — Thu, 07 Dec 2017 15:03:58 +0000

Dollars and Sense is an enjoyable, non-technical overview of some of the ways we make bad money decisions and a few ways we can get better. The primary author, Dan Ariely, is a well-known behavioral economist who has written extensively about how predictably irrational we can be. The other author is a comedian (with a middle-aged white-guy sensibility), which ... Read more

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Make Any Decision

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 12:01:33 +0000

Behavioral Economics (BE), a mash-up of psychology and economics, originally interested me because it promised a way to understand and predict mistakes that people make. This helped me do a better job as a banker to governments and nonprofits, because I could help them (and me) avoid those mistakes. It took a while for me to ... Read more

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Nudges: For Your Own Good?

Brett F. Whysel — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 19:00:12 +0000

What do classical music in the train station, binge-inducing pre-loaded TV show episodes in Netflix, and those "I voted stickers" you get after voting have in common? Read our latest article, "Nudges: For Your Own Good?" about how government and businesses "nudge" your behavior for your own good...or maybe not (5 minute read).

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Objective: Decision

Brett F. Whysel — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 18:51:01 +0000

In short an objective decision is a just and fair one, supported by verifiable facts, with which rational and informed people will tend to agree. That said, subjectivity has its place. It's up to us to determine mindfully the degree of objectivity is required in each case.

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Taking the Red Pill: Into the Decision Matrix

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 22:49:55 +0000

Do you want a simple and easy tool for making an important decision? The simplest “tool” is a heuristic. A short-cut like “take the default” or “do what everyone else is doing” may be fine for selecting a restaurant entrée or route to the grocery store. But what about more important decisions like taking a ... Read more

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